GLOSSARY OF POETIC TERMS

Allegory
A poem in which the characters or descriptions convey a hidden symbolic or moral message. For
example, the various knights in The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser are allegorical
representations of virtues such as truth, friendship and justice.

Alliteration
The effect created when words with the same initial letter (usually consonants) are used in close
proximity e.g. Ariel's song from The Tempest 'Full fathom five thy father lies'. The repeated 'f'
sound is alliterative. Alliteration is sometimes referred to as head rhyme. Other examples of
alliteration include: 'Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle' from 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' by
Wilfred Owen and the five consecutive 'ds' in 'The Windhover' by Manley Hopkins- 'kingdom of
daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon'.

Allusion
An allusion is a reference to an object, person, or event from another literary work, history, society,
etc., that the reader is expected to understand. Allusions may be biblical, mythological, historical,
literary, or social. Often poets allude to other peoms, for example, the 14th line of The Prelude by
William Wordsworth 'The earth was all before me' alludes to one of the final lines of Paradise Lost
by John Milton 'The world was all before them'. Paradise Lost, in turn, alludes to the story of Adam
and Eve in Genesis.
A poem containing multiple allusions is The Waste Land by T.S.Eliot which makes reference to
lines written by Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Marvell, Dante, Webster, St.
Augustine, Goldsmith, Ovid etc.

Assonance
Resemblance or similarity in sound between vowels followed by different consonants in two or
more stressed syllables. Assonance differs from rhyme in that rhyme is a similarity of vowel and
consonant. 'Lake' and 'fake' demonstrate rhyme; 'lake' and 'fate' assonance. Substitution of
assonance for end-rhyme is characteristic of Emily Dickinson's verse, and is used extensively by
many contemporary poets.
As an enriching ornament within the line, assonance is of great use to the poet. Poe and Swinburne
used it extensively for musical effect. Gerard Manley Hopkins introduced modern poets to its wide
use. The skill with which Dylan Thomas manipulates assonance is one of his high achievements.
Note its complex employment in the first stanza of Thomas' 'Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait':
The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.
Assonance is involved in 'bows' (pronounced boughs) and 'down'; 'blackened,' 'last,' 'thrashing,'
'hair, etc.

Ballad
Term originating from the Portuguese word balada meaning 'dancing-song'. However, it normally
refers to either a simple song e.g. Danny Boy or to a narrative poem (often with a tragic ending).
Bob Dylan wrote and sang some wonderfully mournful ballads e.g. The Ballad of Hollis Brown.
The ballad stanza is a quatrain where the second and fourth lines rhyme. It usually features

alternating four-stress and three-stress lines.

Blank verse
Verse that does not employ a rhyme scheme. Blank verse, however, is not the same as free verse
because it employs a meter e.g. Paradise Lost by Milton which is written in iambic pentameters.

Cadence
The natural rhythm of speech - as opposed to the rhythm of meter.

Canto
The subdivision of a long narrative poem e.g. in The Divine Comedy by Dante.

Carpe Diem
Latin for 'seize the day'. Originally a phrase taken from an ode by Horace, and famously employed
by English Renaissance poets such as Andrew Marvell, but more recently synonymous with the film
Dead Poets Society.

Conceit
An elaborate and complicated metaphor. An early exponent of conceits was the 14th Century Italian
poet Petrarch. The Petrarchan conceit was imitated by many Elizabethan poets including
Shakespeare. Conceits were also used extensively by the metaphysical poets. John Donne famously
compared two lovers to a pair of compasses in his poem A Valediction: forbidding Mourning.

Couplet
Two lines of verse with similar rhyme. Formally, the couplet is a two-line stanza with both
grammatical structure and idea complete within itself, but the form has gone through numerous
adaptations, the most famous of which is the heroic couplet, which is a pair of rhyming lines written
in iambic pentameter. It is customary but not essential that the length of each line be the same.
Couplets are usually written in octosyllabic and decasyllabic lines.

Denotation and Connotation

Every word has a denotation, or dictionary meaning. Many words share the same denotation, which
is why we have synonyms. If you have every used a thesaurus, you have found words with the same
denotations. However, these words can't always be used interchangeably because their connotations,
or associations, may be different. Words may trigger a response in a reader and cause the reader to
make associations to the word. A poet can choose words with connotations that fit the tone he or she
is trying to achieve or the image he or she is evoking.

Diction
The choice of words and/or grammatical constructions in a poem (i.e., formal, colloquial, jargon,
slang, etc.)

Dramatic Monologue
Poem narrated by an imaginary character (not the poet) in the manner of a speech from a play.
Dramatic monologue poems were particularly developed during the 19th century by poets such as
Tennyson, Hardy and most notably Robert Browning (e.g. 'My Last Duchess'). The technique was
then used to great effect by Eliot (e.g. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) and Pound.

Ekphrasis
Poetry (or other literature) written about works of art e.g. Muse des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden.

Elegy
Poem written to lament the dead e.g. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray. Such
a poem would employ a mournful or elegiac tone. Other examples of elegy include: Lycidas by
Milton, In Memoriam by Tennyson and In Memory of W. B. Yeats by Auden. A more modern
example of elegy is V by Tony Harrison.

Elision
The suppression of a vowel or syllable for metrical purposes. E.g. 'The sedge has wither'd from the
lake' from La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats.

Enjambment
The continuation of a sentence or phrase across a line break - as opposed to an end-stopped line.
Enjambment is sometimes known as run-on.

Epic Poetry
Poetry written on a grand scale and usually narrative in nature e.g. The Odyssey by Homer. English
examples of epic verse include The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser and Paradise Lost by
Milton.

Foot
A measurable, patterned unit of poetic rhythm. The concept of the foot has been imported into
modern accentual-syllabic prosody from classical quantitative practice, and disagreement over the
nature (and even the "existence") of the foot has been traditional since the late Renaissance. The
English foot is customarily defined as a measure of rhythm consisting of 1 accented (stressed,
"long") syllable (or 2, as the spondee) and 1 or more unaccented (unstressed, "short," "slack")
syllables. The poetic line in a more or less regular composition, consists of a number of feet from 1
to 8; conventionally, the feet are to be roughly of the same kind, although metrical variations,
produced by the occasional "substitution" of different feet, are permissible so long as these
substitutions do not efface for long the repeated pattern of the prevailing foot.
In traditional English accentual or accentual-syllabic verse the following feet are the most common:
iamb (iambic)
anapest (anapestic)

x/
xx/

(as in "destroy")
("intervene")

trochee (trochaic)

/x

dactyl (dactylic)

/xx

("merrily")

//

("amen")

spondee (spondaic)

("topsy")

Iambic and anapestic feet are called ascending or rising feet; trochaic and dactylic, descending or
falling. The exemplification of these feet by single words, above, of course distorts their nature: it
is important to remember that feet divisions do not necessarily correspond to word divisions, and
that the structure of a foot is determined contextually by the nature of the feet which surround it.

Free Verse
Poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic cadence or the recurrence, with variations, of phrases,
images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of meter. Rhyme may or may not
be present in free verse, but when it is, it is used with great freedom. In conventional verse the unit
is the foot, or the line; in free verse the units are larger, sometimes being paragraphs or strophes. If
the free verse unit is the line, as it is in Whitman, the line is determined by qualities of rhythm and
thought rather than feet.
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was a major experiment in cadenced rather than metrical

versification. The following lines are typical:

All truths wait in all things
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon.
It was the French poets of the late nineteenth century --Rimbaud, Laforgue, and others--who, in
their revolt against the tyranny of strict French versification established the Vers libre movement,
from which the name free verse comes. In the twentieth century free verse has had widespread
usage by most poets.

Images/Imagery
Images are representations of sensations perceived through the five senses: sight, hearing, smell,
touch and taste. Visual images are the most common e.g. William Carlos Williams' famous: 'a red
wheel/barrow/glazed with rain/water'. However, images can rely on any of the senses. 'Then in a
wailful choir the small gnats mourn' from Keats' To Autumn is an example of an auditory image.
Imagery is the creation of images using words. Poets usually achieve this by invoking comparisons
by means of metaphor or simile.

Irony
Speakers may use this device, saying things that are not to be taken literally, forming a contrast.
1. verbal irony - contrast between what is said and what is meant.
a. sarcasm - heavy, mocking verbal irony.
b. understatement - saying less than what is meant.
c. hyperbole (overstatement) exaggeration.
2. dramatic irony - contrast between what is intended and what is accomplished.

Line
A formal structural division of a poem, consisting of one or more feet arranged as a separate
rhythmical entity. The line, as Brooks and Warren point out, is a 'unit of attention,' but it is not
necessarily a unit of sense: in fact, poems are rather rare in which individual lines constitute
complete sense units. For this reason, line divisions, unless they happen to coincide with sense
pauses (whether indicated by punctuation or not), are often as unrelated to the rhetoric of poetic
assertions as foot divisions. Lines are commonly classified according to their length in feet:
monometer

a line of 1 foot

dimeter

2 feet

trimeter

3 feet

tetrameter

4 feet

pentameter

5 feet

hexameter

6 feet (also "Alexandrine")

heptameter

7 feet

octameter

8 feet

The pentameter line has proved the most flexible in English.

Lyric poetry
Term originally derived from the Greek word meaning 'for the lyre' and indicating verses that were

written to be sung. However, more recently the term 'lyric' has been used to refer to short poems,
often written in the 'I' form, where the poet expresses his or her feelings

Metaphor
An imaginative comparison between two actions/objects etc which is not literally applicable.

Meter and Rhythm

English poetry employs five basic rhythms of varying stressed (/) and unstressed (x) syllables. The
meters are iambs, trochees, spondees, anapests and dactyls. In the following examples the stressed
syllables are marked in boldface type rather than the tradition / and x. Each unit of rhythm is called
a foot of poetry.
The meters with two-syllable feet are
IAMBIC (x /) : That time of year thou mayst in me behold
TROCHAIC (/ x): Tell me not in mournful numbers
SPONDAIC (/ /): Break, break, break/ On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
Meters with three-syllable feet are
ANAPESTIC (x x /): And the sound of a voice that is still
DACTYLIC (/ x x): This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock (a
trochee replaces the final dactyl)
Each line of a poem contains a certain number of feet of iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls or
anapests. A line of one foot is a monometer, 2 feet is a dimeter, and so on--trimeter (3), tetrameter
(4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7), and octameter (8). The number of syllables in a
line varies therefore according to the meter.
Here are some examples of the various meters.
iambic pentameter (5 iambs, 10 syllables):That time | of year | thou mayst | in me | behold
trochaic tetrameter (4 trochees, 8 syllables):Tell me | not in | mournful | numbers
anapestic trimeter (3 anapests, 9 syllables):And the sound | of a voice | that is still
dactylic hexameter (6 dactyls, 17 syllables; a trochee replaces the last dactyl):This is the | forest pri
| meval, the | murmuring | pine and the | hemlocks

Mock-Heroic
Type of satirical verse which deals with trivial matters in the style of epic or heroic verse. The Rape
of the Lock by Alexander Pope is an example of mock-heroic verse. Pope's poem was inspired by
Lord Petre's cutting of a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair without her permission.

Narrative poem
A poem whose main purpose is to tell a story.

Ode
Comes from the Greek word meaning song. Odes are normally written in an exalted style and are
classified as either Pindaric (after Pindar) or Horatian (after Horace). Horatian Odes repeat a single
stanza shape through out (based upon the first stanza). However, the shape of that stanza is at the
discretion of the poet. In the 17th century Abraham Cowley developed the irregular ode which
features stanzas with varying forms and lengths.

Open and Closed Form

The structure or pattern of organization that a poet chooses in writing a poem is referred to as being
either open or closed. An open form does not have an established pattern to it, whether it be in line
length, meter, rhyme, imagery, syntax, or stanzas. A closed form does have an established pattern in
one or more of those areas. Types of closed form poems include the sonnet, the sestina, the
villanelle, the haiku, etc.

Paradox
Seemingly absurd statement which, on closer examination, reveals an important truth e.g.
Wordsworth's ' The child is father of the man'.

Personification
Figure of speech whereby inanimate objects or abstractions are given human characteristics.
Personification is a form of metaphor.

Pun
Playful device where similar sounding words with different meanings, or single words with multiple
meanings are employed. Shakespeare used puns for both comic and serious effect e.g. in Romeo
and Juliet the dying Mercutio says: 'Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.'

Repetition
Repetition of a sound, syllable, word, phrase, line, stanza, or metrical pattern is a basic unifying
device in all poetry. It may reinforce, supplement, or even substitute for meter, the other chief
controlling factor in the arrangement of words into poetry. The exact repetition of words in the same
metrical pattern at regular intervals forms a refrain, which serves to set off or divide narrative into
segments, as in ballads, or, in lyric poetry, to indicate shifts or developments of emotion. Such
repetitions may serve as commentary, a static point against which the rest of the poem develops, or
it may be simply a pleasing sound pattern to fill out a form. As a unifying device, independent of
conventional metrics, repetition is found extensively in free verse, where parallelism (repetition of a
grammar pattern) reinforced by the recurrence of actual words and phrases governs the rhythm
which helps to distinguish free verse from prose.
The repetition of similar endings of words or even of identical syllables constitutes rhyme, used
generally to bind lines together into larger units or to set up relationships within the same line
(internal rhyme).
Alliteration the repetition of initial sounds of accented syllables frequently supplements the use of
other unifying devices, although in Old English poetry it formed the basic structure of the line and
is still so employed occasionally in modern poetry. Another repetitional device used chiefly in a
decorative or supplemental function rather than in a structural one is assonance, the use of similar
vowel sounds with identical consonant clusters.
The repetition of a phrase in poetry may have an incantatory effect as in the opening lines of T. S.
Eliot's 'Ash-Wednesday':
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn....
Sometimes the effect of a repeated phrase in a poem will be to emphasize a development or change
by means of the contrast in the words following the identical phrases. The repetition of a complete
line within a poem may be used regularly at the end of each stanza as a refrain, or in other ways.
Rarely a line may be repeated entire and immediately as a means of bringing a poem to a close:
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. (Frost, 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening')

Rhyme
The effect produced when similar vowel sounds chime together and where the final consonant
sound is also in agreement e.g. 'bat' and 'cat'. Rhyme is normally divided into masculine and
feminine rhymes. Masculine or single rhymes occur when the last syllable in a word rhymes with
the last syllable in another word. This can occur where the words are single syllable words such as
'bat' and 'cat' or where the words have more than one syllable but where the final syllable of each
word is stressed e.g. 'instead' and 'mislead'. Masculine rhymes are usually associated with endstressed meters such as iambic. Feminine rhymes occur in words of more than one syllable where
the stressed (or rhyming) syllable is followed by an unstressed syllable e.g. 'nearly' and 'clearly' or
'meeting' and 'greeting'. Feminine rhymes tend to be used in front stressed meters such as trochaic.
The rhyme patterns in a poem can be analysed by using letters at the end of lines to denote similar
vowel sounds (a, b, c, etc).

Satirical verse
Verse which employs wit and ridicule to attack hypocrisy, pomposity or social injustice etc. Dryden,
Pope and Swift in the 18th century were renowned for their satirical verse.

Simile
The explicit comparison of two objects/phenomenon/states, etc. - by employing either 'as' or 'like'
e.g. 'My love is like a red, red rose' by Robert Burns.

Sonnet
A lyric poem of fourteen lines, following one or another of several set rhyme-schemes. Critics of
the sonnet have recognized varying classifications, but to all essential purposes two types only need
be discussed. The two characteristic sonnet types are the Italian (Petrarchan) and the English
(Shakespearean).
The first, the Italian form, is distinguished by its bipartite division into the octave and the sestet: the
octave consisting of a first division of eight lines rhyming abbaabba and the sestet, or second
division, consisting of six lines rhyming cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce.The octave presents the
narrative, states the proposition or raises a question; the sestet drives home the narrative by making
an abstract comment, applies the proposition, or solves the problem. The octave and sestet division
is not always kept; the rhyme-scheme is often varied, but within limits--no Italian sonnet properly
allowing more than five rhymes. Iambic pentameter is essentially the meter, but here again certain
poets have experimented with hexameter and other meters.
The English (Shakespearean) sonnet, on the other hand, is so different from the Italian (though it
grew from that form) as to permit of a separate classification. Instead of the octave and sestet
divisions, this sonnet characteristically embodies four divisions: three quatrains (each with a rhymescheme of its own) and a rhymed couplet. Thus the typical rhyme-scheme for the English sonnet is
abab cdcd efef gg. The couplet at the end is usually a commentary on the foregoing, an
epigrammatic close. The Spenserian sonnet combines the Italian and the Shakespearean forms,
using three quatrains and a couplet but employing linking rhymes between the quatrains, thus abab
bcbc cdcd ee.
Certain qualities common to the sonnet as a form should be noted. Its definite restrictions make it a
challenge to the artistry of the poet and call for all the technical skill at the poet's command. The
more or less set rhyme patterns occurring regularly within the short space of fourteen lines afford a
pleasant effect on the ear of the reader, and can create truly musical effects. Emphasis is placed on
exactness and perfection of expression.
The sonnet as a form developed in Italy probably in the thirteenth century. Petrarch, in the
fourteenth century, raised the sonnet to its greatest Italian perfection and so gave it, for English
readers, his own name. The form was introduced into England by Thomas Wyatt, who translated

Petrarchan sonnets and left over thirty examples of his own in English. Surrey, an associate, shares
with Wyatt the credit for introducing the form to England and is important as an early modifier of
the Italian form. Gradually the Italian sonnet pattern was changed and since Shakespeare attained
fame for the greatest poems of this modified type his name has often been given to the English
form.
With the interest in this poetic form, certain poets following the example of Petrarch have written a
series of sonnets linked one to the other and dealing with some unified subject. Such series are
called sonnet sequences. Some of the most famous sonnet sequences in English literature are those
by Shakespeare (154 in the group), Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, Spenser's Amoretti, Rossetti's
House of Life, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese.

Stanza
One or more lines that make up the basic units of a poem - separated from each other by spacing.
Over the centuries Greek, Roman, French, Italian, English, German and Japanese poets have
evolved a huge number of different stanza forms. Some of these forms still carry the name of the
poet who invented them e.g. the Petrarchan sonnet.

Symbol
Words or images that signify more than they literally represent e.g. the 'sun' or the 'moon'. Symbols
can carry a number of different connotations . Yeats frequently used symbols in his poetry - in
particular the 'tower'. As a symbol the 'tower' carries connotations of strength and sexuality, but is
also a tarot card representing suffering and destruction.

Synecdoche
Figure of speech where a part is made to stand for the whole e.g. in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:
'Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.'

Syntax
Syntax refers to the word order of words in a sentence, phrase, or clause. Poets use syntax as they
use any other rhetorical device --to create meaning. Poets can create emphasis, tone, or show state
of mind by the order of the words, the repetition of words, or the sudden breaking off of words. The
word order may also be rearranged in order to create rhythm or sustain a rhyme scheme.

Theme
The main idea, thesis or subject matter of a poem. Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' for example, deals
with the permanence of art and the impermanence of life.

Tone
The 'tone' of a poem reveals the attitude of the poet or speaker toward his/her subject e.g. anger,
love, resignation, despair, fear, boredom etc., evident from the diction, use of symbolism, irony, and
figures of speech.